At this moment the heavy doors above the stairs were flung open, and the old Count appeared at the top step, standing like Samson when in his wrath he broke down the temple of the Philistines.

He was always a striking figure, short in the legs and with the torso of a giant, his mighty head surrounded by a mane of wild gray hair, like a poet’s or a lion’s. But today he seemed strangely inspired, in the grip of some tremendous emotion, swaying where he stood. He remained for a moment immovable, scrutinizing his visitor, like an old man gorilla outside his lair, ready for the attack; then he came down the stairs upon the young man, imposing upon him a presence such as the Lord himself might have shown had he descended, for once, the ladder of Jacob.

Good God, thought Boris, as he walked up the steps to meet him, this old man knows all, and is going to kill me. He had a glimpse of the old Count’s face, filled with wild triumph, the light eyes aflame. The next moment he felt his arms around him, and his body trembling against his own.

“Boris!” he cried, “Boris, my child,” for he had known the boy from childhood, and had, Boris was aware, once been one of his beautiful mother’s adorers, “welcome. Welcome here today. Do you know?” “Know?” said Boris. “I have won my case,” said the old man. Boris stared at him. “I have won my case in Poland,” he repeated. “Lariki, Lipnika, Parnov Grabovo—they are all mine, as they were the old people’s.”

“I congratulate you,” said Boris, slowly, his thoughts strangely put into motion. “With all my heart. This is unexpected news indeed!” The old Count thanked him many times, and showed him the letter from his lawyer, which he had just received, and was still holding in his hand. As he was talking to the boy he spoke slowly at first, seeking for his words, as a man out of the habit of speech, but as he went on he recovered his old voice and speech that had in the old days charmed so many people. “A great passion, Boris,” he said, “such as does really and truly devour your heart and soul, you cannot feel for individual beings. Perhaps you cannot feel it for anything which is capable of loving you in return. Those officers who have loved their armies, those lords who have loved their soil, they can talk about passion. My God, I have had the whole weight of the land of Hopballehus upon my chest at night, when I imagined that I had been leading it into a lost battle. But this,” he said, drawing a deep breath, “this is happiness.” Boris understood that it was not the thought of his riches which filled the soul of the old man, but the triumph of right over wrong, the righteousness of the entire universe being, to him, concentrated in his own figure. He began to explain the judgment in detail, still with one hand upon the young man’s shoulder, and Boris felt that he was welcome to his heart as a friend who could listen. “Come in, come in, Boris,” he said, “we will drink a glass together, you and I, from the wine which I have put aside for today. Our good Pastor is here. I sent for him when I got the letter, to keep me company, as I did not know that you would be coming.”

Within the prodigious hall, richly ornamented with black marble, a small corner was made habitable by a few chairs and a table, covered with the Count’s books and papers. Above it was a gigantic picture, much darkened by age, an equestrian portrait of an old lord of the house, holding himself very calm upon a rearing horse with a small head, and pointing with a roll of paper toward a battlefield depicted in the distance under the belly of the horse. Pastor Rosenquist, a short man with red cheeks, who had for many years been the spiritual guide of the family, and whom Boris knew well, was sitting in one of the chairs, apparently in deep thought. The happenings of the day had brought disorder in his theories, which was to him a more serious disaster than if the parsonage had burnt down. He had suffered from poverty and misfortunes all his life, and had in the course of time come to live upon a system of spiritual bookkeeping according to which earthly trials became an investment, drawing interest in the other world. His own personal account, he knew, was made up in very small change, but he had taken a great interest in the old Count’s sorrows, and had looked upon him as a favorite of the Lord’s, whose treasures were all the time accumulating in the new Jerusalem, like to sapphires, chrysoprase and amethyst propagating on their own. Now he was upset and did not know what to think, which to him was a terrible condition. He had sought comfort in the book of Job, but even there the figures would not agree, Behemoth and Leviathan coming in upon an account of losses and profits of their own. The whole affair seemed to him in the nature of a gift, which, according to Ecclesiastes, destroyeth the heart, and he could not get away from the thought that this old man, whom he loved, was in the bad way of anticipating his income.

“Now I would,” said the old Count, when he had fetched and opened the golden bottle, “that my poor father and my dear grandfather were here with us to drink this wine. I have felt, as I have lain awake at night, that they have kept awake with me within their sarcophagi below. I am happy,” he went on as, still standing, he lifted his glass, “that it be the son of Abunde”—that was his old name for Boris’s mother—“who drinks here with me tonight.” In the exuberance of his heart he patted Boris’s cheek with tenderness, while his face radiated a gentleness which had been in exile for years; and the boy, who knew a good thing when he saw it, envied the old man his innocence of heart. “And to our good Pastor,” the Count said, turning to him. “My friend, you have shed tears of sympathy in this house. They arise now as wine.”

The old Count’s manner heightened Pastor Rosenquist’s uneasiness. It seemed to him that only a frivolous heart could move with such ease in a new atmosphere, forgetting the old. Brought up himself upon a system of examinations and promotions, he was not prepared to understand a race reared upon the laws of luck in war and court favor, adjusted for the unforeseen and accustomed to the unexpected, for whom to be safe, or even saved, seems the least necessary of all things. Then again came into his mind the words of the Scripture—“He saith amongst the trumpets, ha, ha!”—and he thought that perhaps after all his old friend was all right. “Yes, yes,” he said, smiling, “water has certainly been changed into wine, once. It is without doubt a good drink. But you know what our good peasants hold: that wine-begotten children will end badly. So, we have reason to fear, will wine-begotten hopes and moods. Though that,” he added, “would not, of course, apply to the children of the wedding of Cana, of which I was just speaking.”

“At Lariki,” said the Count, “there is hung, in the ceiling of the gateway, a hunting-horn in an iron chain. My grandfather’s grandfather was a man of herculean strength. When in the evening he rode through the gate, he used to take hold of the horn, and, lifting himself and his horse from the ground, he blew it. I have known that I could do the same, but I thought I should never ride through that gate. Athena might do it, too,” he added thoughtfully.

He refilled his glasses. “How is it that you came here today?” he asked Boris, beaming upon him and his gala uniform, as if his coming had been a unique exploit. “What brings you to Hopballehus?” Boris felt the old man’s openness reflected in his own heart, like a blue sky in the sea. He looked into his friend’s face. “I came here today,” he said, “to ask Athena to marry me.” The old man gave him a great, luminous glance. “To ask Athena to marry you!” he exclaimed. “You came here today for that?” He stood for a moment, deeply moved. “The ways of God are strange indeed,” he said. Pastor Rosenquist rose from his chair and sat down again, to arrange his accounts.

When the old Count spoke again he was much changed. The intoxication was gone, and he seemed to have collected the forces of his nature in good order. It was this balance which had given him a name in the old days, when he had, as a young man of the Embassy in Paris, upon the first night of his tragedy, The Undine, fought a duel with pistols in the entr’acte.

“Boris, my child,” he said, “you have come here to change my heart. I have been living with my face toward the past, or for this hour of victory. This moment is the first in which I have thought of the future. I see that I shall have to come down from a pinnacle to walk along a road. Your words are opening up a great vista to me. What am I to be? The patriarch of Hopballehus, crowning virtuous village maidens? Grandpapa, planting apple trees? Ave, Hopballehus. Naturi te salutem.”

Boris remembered the Prioress’s letter, and told the old man how he had called at Closter Seven on his way. The Count inquired after the lady, and, always keen on all sorts of papers, he put on his glasses and became absorbed in the letter. Boris sat and drank his wine in a happy mood. During the last week he had come to doubt whether life ever held anything pleasant at all. Now his reception in the old Count’s house was to him a show of the most enjoyable kind, and he always moved with ease from one mood to another.

When the Count had finished the reading, he laid the letter down and, keeping his folded hands upon it, he sat for a long time silent.

“I give you,” he said at last slowly and solemnly, “my blessing. First I give it to the son of your mother—and of your father—secondly to the young man who, as I see now, has loved so long against all. And finally I feel that you have been sent, Boris, by stronger hands than your own tonight.

“I give you, in Athena, the key of my whole world. Athena,” he repeated, as if it gave him joy to pronounce his daughter’s name, “is herself like a hunting-horn in the woods.” And as if, without knowing it himself, some strange and sad memory of his youth had taken possession of him, he added, almost in a whisper, “Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond du bois.”